barmyarmy submitted a new blog post
KP - dispelling the myths
My, my, the establishment is out for traitor’s blood. The anger inherent in every KP discussion seems to stem in large part from the insistence of [HASHTAG]#TeamECB[/HASHTAG] that none of his complaints are valid and that his own actions are beyond the pale.
Take this quote from Peter Oborne, writing in the Spectator today:
“Pietersen’s story is already starting to fall apart. Fellow players like Graeme Swann say his account is ‘fiction’. The claim of dressing room rivalry in Australia has been undermined by the revelation that after the first Test last November Pietersen said that ‘this is the best England dressing room environment I have ever experienced’.
The claims about bullying have not been sustained, while giant question marks surround Pietersen’s own treatment of junior players, including James Taylor and Michael Carberry.”
The utter determination to dismiss the “bullying” story despite corroboration now from Chris Tremlett, Ajmal Shazhad, Jonathan Trott, Jonathan Agnew and even Ricky Ponting suggests that the only fiction is coming from those who remain in denial.
Pietersen has never denied criticising James Taylor but made clear that it was in a private conversation with Andy Flower which was subsequently leaked. It seems to me utterly deplorable that Pietersen can be asked his view in private, as with the team meeting in Sydney, and then hauled over the coals for daring to give it. England cricket fans should be deeply uneasy about a management structure that was not only utterly unable to cope with a high maintenance player but also went out of its way to leak private conversations and brief against him.
In fairly Orwellian fashion, doing his bit for the team in public by praising the team spirit is labelled as hypocrisy when imagine the furore if KP had said the dressing room is riven by cliques and full of senior players who bully junior ones, while still playing test cricket for England. The sense of PR-speak has been drummed into Team England long enough as any journalist will tell you. Ironically of course both Michael Carberry and James Taylor, who have no reason to lie about it, say that they have no issue with Pietersen and remain friends. This detail is generally ignored by the “It was KP who was the bully” brigade.
Another canard that has reappeared with regularity is,
“the breakdown with the bowlers came after Pietersen sent offensive texts about Strauss to the South Africans”.
Whilst we don’t know exactly what happened, and KP has been unconvincing with his memory losses, the suggestion seems to be that he was sent messages that were rude about Strauss and failed to contradict them, which is a somewhat lesser crime. The real mis-information here though is the dating of the anti-KP clique to textgate conveniently making it his fault and “how could anyone trust him after that?” etc. This ignores KP Genius.
Pietersen himself is very clear that KP Genius, aka Richard Bailey, was being fed information from inside the dressing room that was too close to the bone and contained too much detail for an outsider. Bailey, who is disingenuously described as a member of the public, is a close friend of the Notts contingent in the England dressing room including Alex Hales, Stuart Broad and Graeme Swann. His denial that anyone else was involved is unprovable one way or the other, except to note again that the tweets bore the impression of information being leaked from inside the England dressing room and a confession was apparently made to Alec Stewart. At very least by following and retweeting content from the account the players involved were guilty of isolating and mocking Pietersen; before textgate.
There has also been a certain amount of using the “dossier” without analysing the claims in it. Some newspapers have just blithely reprinted what it said. Here is today’s Times:
“Upon arrival in Adelaide for the Second Test, AF [Andy Flower] gave express instructions to players not to stay out late and not to give the scandal‐voracious press any ammunition, which KP immediately disobeyed by taking out two young players drinking with him until late (an incident which was front page news in the Adelaide press the following day)."
Yet here is the press report from the incident in question (one of the young players incidentally was the England T20 captain):
“Stuart Broad, Kevin Pietersen and Jonny Bairstow did not break team protocols by going for a night out in Adelaide, the ECB has said. They are free to do as they please - they are grown men. There has been no breach of team protocol."
The agendas of certain media outlets have also stifled any attempt at myth dispelling. We know KP fell out with Paul Newman but it was still remarkable to see the paper describing the dossier as incontrovertible evidence while everyone else was busy laughing at it. Graeme Swann writes for the Sun so the paper was always going to protect its own columnist. These though are two of the most widely read papers in the country and will continue to repeat the myths above, as no doubt their readers will too. It’s sad when you have to go outside the cricket establishment and mainsteam media to get balance. Perhaps the writers are simply embarrassed at their failure to hold the ECB to account or maybe they too fell out with KP. Objectivity is going to be too much to ask for but let’s at least try to do better than the same tired lines above.
Updated: Alec Stewart has now confirmed that he was told that three England players, Stuart Broad, Graeme Swann and Tim Bresnan had the password to KPGenius giving them the ability to send tweets from the account. This information was passed onto the ECB who chose instead to believe the denial of the players involved. Slowly all the claims in the book are being backed up by actual evidence.
Continue reading the Original Blog Post.
KP - dispelling the myths
My, my, the establishment is out for traitor’s blood. The anger inherent in every KP discussion seems to stem in large part from the insistence of [HASHTAG]#TeamECB[/HASHTAG] that none of his complaints are valid and that his own actions are beyond the pale.
Take this quote from Peter Oborne, writing in the Spectator today:
“Pietersen’s story is already starting to fall apart. Fellow players like Graeme Swann say his account is ‘fiction’. The claim of dressing room rivalry in Australia has been undermined by the revelation that after the first Test last November Pietersen said that ‘this is the best England dressing room environment I have ever experienced’.
The claims about bullying have not been sustained, while giant question marks surround Pietersen’s own treatment of junior players, including James Taylor and Michael Carberry.”
The utter determination to dismiss the “bullying” story despite corroboration now from Chris Tremlett, Ajmal Shazhad, Jonathan Trott, Jonathan Agnew and even Ricky Ponting suggests that the only fiction is coming from those who remain in denial.
Pietersen has never denied criticising James Taylor but made clear that it was in a private conversation with Andy Flower which was subsequently leaked. It seems to me utterly deplorable that Pietersen can be asked his view in private, as with the team meeting in Sydney, and then hauled over the coals for daring to give it. England cricket fans should be deeply uneasy about a management structure that was not only utterly unable to cope with a high maintenance player but also went out of its way to leak private conversations and brief against him.
In fairly Orwellian fashion, doing his bit for the team in public by praising the team spirit is labelled as hypocrisy when imagine the furore if KP had said the dressing room is riven by cliques and full of senior players who bully junior ones, while still playing test cricket for England. The sense of PR-speak has been drummed into Team England long enough as any journalist will tell you. Ironically of course both Michael Carberry and James Taylor, who have no reason to lie about it, say that they have no issue with Pietersen and remain friends. This detail is generally ignored by the “It was KP who was the bully” brigade.
Another canard that has reappeared with regularity is,
“the breakdown with the bowlers came after Pietersen sent offensive texts about Strauss to the South Africans”.
Whilst we don’t know exactly what happened, and KP has been unconvincing with his memory losses, the suggestion seems to be that he was sent messages that were rude about Strauss and failed to contradict them, which is a somewhat lesser crime. The real mis-information here though is the dating of the anti-KP clique to textgate conveniently making it his fault and “how could anyone trust him after that?” etc. This ignores KP Genius.
Pietersen himself is very clear that KP Genius, aka Richard Bailey, was being fed information from inside the dressing room that was too close to the bone and contained too much detail for an outsider. Bailey, who is disingenuously described as a member of the public, is a close friend of the Notts contingent in the England dressing room including Alex Hales, Stuart Broad and Graeme Swann. His denial that anyone else was involved is unprovable one way or the other, except to note again that the tweets bore the impression of information being leaked from inside the England dressing room and a confession was apparently made to Alec Stewart. At very least by following and retweeting content from the account the players involved were guilty of isolating and mocking Pietersen; before textgate.
There has also been a certain amount of using the “dossier” without analysing the claims in it. Some newspapers have just blithely reprinted what it said. Here is today’s Times:
“Upon arrival in Adelaide for the Second Test, AF [Andy Flower] gave express instructions to players not to stay out late and not to give the scandal‐voracious press any ammunition, which KP immediately disobeyed by taking out two young players drinking with him until late (an incident which was front page news in the Adelaide press the following day)."
Yet here is the press report from the incident in question (one of the young players incidentally was the England T20 captain):
“Stuart Broad, Kevin Pietersen and Jonny Bairstow did not break team protocols by going for a night out in Adelaide, the ECB has said. They are free to do as they please - they are grown men. There has been no breach of team protocol."
The agendas of certain media outlets have also stifled any attempt at myth dispelling. We know KP fell out with Paul Newman but it was still remarkable to see the paper describing the dossier as incontrovertible evidence while everyone else was busy laughing at it. Graeme Swann writes for the Sun so the paper was always going to protect its own columnist. These though are two of the most widely read papers in the country and will continue to repeat the myths above, as no doubt their readers will too. It’s sad when you have to go outside the cricket establishment and mainsteam media to get balance. Perhaps the writers are simply embarrassed at their failure to hold the ECB to account or maybe they too fell out with KP. Objectivity is going to be too much to ask for but let’s at least try to do better than the same tired lines above.
Updated: Alec Stewart has now confirmed that he was told that three England players, Stuart Broad, Graeme Swann and Tim Bresnan had the password to KPGenius giving them the ability to send tweets from the account. This information was passed onto the ECB who chose instead to believe the denial of the players involved. Slowly all the claims in the book are being backed up by actual evidence.
Continue reading the Original Blog Post.
Last edited by a moderator:
